Compelling commentary on children's health

Open your mind here. I had a mother report today that she is correcting her four-year-old daughter's constipation with tickling (and a healthy dose of Miralax). It seems her child is one of millions of toddlers with stool withholding, the annoying behavioral pattern of desperate stiffening and avoidance after encountering a painful turd. It's a silent epidemic that I confront head-on every day.

So here's what mom does: When it's clear that junior miss is passionately engaged in her potty dance (eye brows to the sky, head back, torso arched and up on tippy toes) she places her square on the pot and begins to tickle her unmercifully. And each time her daughter eliminates.

It's brilliant really. What's happening is the child initiates avoidance when she recognizes stool in the rectal vault. She withholds to avoid pain. Mom recognizes the cue and stimulates to the point where the child loses the iron-clad control of her pelvic floor. The laughter creates intra-abdominal pressure which exceeds the pressure of her external sphincter. Voila.

No word on the long-term effects of tickling on the toilet. But for now it represents a simple solution for one toddler in crisis.

With the thimerosal argument in the weeds and the measles connection corrupt, the Great Vaccine Witch Hunt is courting its new darling: the elusive mitochondria. And this time they have the perfect culprit. Mitochondrial disorders are poorly understood, nearly impossible to predict, hard to identify and may become most apparent during the peak vaccine age. A lot like autism. It’s the perfect storm.

Dr. Thomas Insel of the National Institutes of Mental Health put it nicely in this morning’s New York Times, “We’re talking about two things we don’t understand very well, mitochondrial disorder and autism, and putting them together,” Dr. Insel said. “It’s like two drunks holding each other up.” Aptly put.

The recent interest stems from two cases of autism in children with mitochondrial disease that were apparently precipitated by the use of vaccines. This weekend a meeting of the minds involving the FDA, NIH, CDC, HHS and others will discuss the issue.

Expect mitochondrial disease to take center stage with Hollywood and the growing grassroots network of self-proclaimed infectious disease experts determined to resurrect a cluster of childhood illnesses long since forgotten. Mercury be damned … it’s on with the show!

The image is an electron micrograph of a mitochondria courtesy of Wikipedia.